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• MILLS: Lessons of Tete's Tobacco Tale  

VIEWED from the air, two things stand out in Tete. One is the 720m suspension bridge, built in the 1960s, spanning the expanse of the Zambezi . The other is a large, modern, white building, a $55m tobacco factory built three years ago, the likes of which the province had not seen since the Portuguese colonialists left in 1975. Until recently, the Mozambican province was better known for heat, dust, the Cahora Bassa hydro scheme on the Zambezi, and the $1,5bn coal investment made by Brazilian mining giant CVRD. It is not the place one expects to find a cutting-edge poverty alleviation programme. Nor does one expect it to be conceived and run by the private sector. But it is -- and this is why, unlike most aid programmes, it both works and is sustainable.

Over the past decade, US-affiliate Mozambique Tobacco Leaf Company (MLTC) has spread its supply network to 45000 outgrowers, each making on average $400 profit for their tobacco crop annually. Growing mainly burley tobacco, the crop has transformed the lives of probably half a million people.

These farmers simply subsisted from the land before. . . .

The company is engaged in malaria spraying programmes, and building infrastructure such as schools, bridges, road repairs, boreholes and clinics, resulting in the mushrooming of other investment such as transport and other agribusiness within the farming communities. About 6000 schoolchildren benefited from company schemes in 2006.

Such practices are driven partly by corporate social responsibility, with the tobacco industry especially sensitive to perceptions of its role. . . .

Tete's tobacco tale illustrates two things. First is the extraordinarily positive impact that export-led agriculture can have on poverty alleviation. It reaches the poorest parts of society and can quickly transform livelihoods and lives for the better. Second, commercial projects do what aid can never achieve. By placing extension services on a commercial footing, it grants a different logic to sustainability, one based not on pity but on performance.

Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, and recently visited Tete province.

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